If you really think "vaccines are useless", I've got a pitiful little guy I'd like you to meet:

The canine rabies vaccine would almost certainly have saved him from his fate. And the human vaccine will definitely save you from your fate if you're bitten by him. Of course, you might want to chance being among the six or so people during recorded history who've recovered from rabies without the vaccine - or perhaps you'd like to be among the 100% who've avoided rabies with the vaccine.

But, please....just go right on saying that "vaccines are useless." Because you'd never get the rabies vaccine if you happened to be bitten by this poor fellow, would you?

While science has indeed come up with a few vaccines that turned out to be duds, most are very useful - some are effective to a lesser degree than the rabies vaccine, some nearly to that level - but they actually help reduce the occurrence of disease overall.

And if you'd take the rabies vaccine if bitten by this miserable dog, then you've already admitted vaccines can save lives and health.

Help send Alabama homeless dogs and cats to areas which (wonderfully) have a shortage of adoptable animals!

Support the Shelby County Humane Society's Shelter Partners Program. Shelby County Humane Society has teamed up with shelters in other parts of the country to take in our heartbreakingly large excess of adoptable animals. It only costs $50.00 to transport an animal to a shelter where he will find a home.!Please help and sponsor one animal - it's a very direct way to help.

And this is a program I know well from personal experience (I live near this shelter). You really will save one life for $50.00. Really.

Compassion and Choices is an organization which promotes choice in end-of-life issues. It lobbies for legalization of voluntary physician aid-in-dying. It provides many resources for those needing information about their rights in terminal medical situations. It provides free downloadable state-specific living will forms. And much more.

Support the cause of skeptical thought and rationalism through the James Randi Educational Foundation. Help stamp out pseudoscience, irrationality, quackery, and the many other irrationalities plaguing mankind.

Logical; a devotee of the Great and All-Powerful Ceiling Cat (god of the indoor cats, of course); in love with all furred, feathered, shelled, and scaled critters (except cockroaches, whom I respect but fear greatly); bookish; way, way too wordy and dry in my forum comments (which comes from too many years of writing legal documents).